IBM, Sun, and VMware in the News

IBM Corp. announced new storage solutions for System z environments. Sun Microsystems Inc. unveiled a new storage blade and two new server blades, and reported preliminary financial results. Meanwhile, VMware Inc. announced mixed quarterly financial results along with a reorganization and hiring freeze.

Focal Points:

• Sun reported preliminary total revenues for the first quarter of 2009. The company expects revenues in the range of $2.95 to $3.05 billion, as compared with $3.22 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2008. Sun anticipates a net loss for the quarter on a GAAP basis of ($0.25) to ($0.35) a share. This includes a restructuring charge but excludes potential goodwill impairment charges. Complete results will be made public on Thursday. The Sun Blade 6000 disk module, which is Sun's first Open Storage blade, offers up to 1.2 TB of storage capacity and is a flash-ready platform. The new dual-processor UltraSPARC T2 Plus-based Sun Blade T6340 server module features built-in, no cost virtualization technologies via Solaris Containers and Logical Domains, and supports up to 768 cores. The Sun Blade X6240 server module, which uses quad-core Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) Opteron processor, is geared for high performance computing (HPC), consolidation and virtualization workloads, according to Sun. For the Telecom market, the company announced the Sun Netra CP3250 ATCA blade server, which uses an eight-core dual-socket Intel Corp. Xeon processor. These systems are available for a free 60-day trial via Sun's Try and Buy Program at www.sun.com/tryandbuy.
• VMware released its revenue results for the third quarter of 2008. Total revenues for the quarter grew 32 percent year-over-year to $472 million. This is down from growth of 54 percent in the second quarter, 69 percent in the first and 80 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. Net income for the quarter on a GAAP basis was $101 million, an increase of 54 percent from the prior year period. VMware's CEO says he will divide VMware into separate business units to handle different areas of product development and appoint new senior executives to manage those divisions. He also imposed a hiring freeze for the fourth quarter that will last into 2009, although he was non-specific on the date.
• IBM announced enhancements to its DS8000 storage systems and its TS7700 tape storage product line. The new IBM System Storage DS8000 Release 4.1 includes a new high performance FICON for System z and z/OS Metro/Global Mirror Incremental Resync. According to IBM, when the resynchronization feature is combined with System z's Hyperswap feature, it can reduce resynchronization time needed after a Hyperswap from hours to minutes. The TS7720 disk only Virtualization Engine provides the benefits and functionality of the TS7740 without the need for physical tape. It can store up to 70 terabytes of data on disk, and support up to 256 virtual tape devices and a maximum of 1 million logical volumes. The TS7720 clusters can be geographically separated and all volumes in the grid can appear like one library to the host.

Experton Group believes demand for core enterprise server and storage products will remain strong, as enterprises seek to meet business requirements. However, the pressures from the economic malaise will cause executives to be concerned with the financial risks of vendors. Experton Group expects buying patterns to shift towards vendors that can assist with financing or are viewed as low risk providers. IT executives should consider a vendor's financial outlook in conjunction with the products and/or services offered and make acquisitions based upon the complete picture of the vendor and its offerings. Nonetheless, IT executives should be cognizant of the fact that certain products will survive even if the provider does not; conversely, certain vendors will continue to exist even if the product line is discontinued.